jacks1071 wrote:Does everyone realise that most the better factory wheels you can buy are handmade?

I bought a set of Fulcrum CX Quattro wheels online which came with a handwritten label attached with the builders or QA guy's signature on them. Good enough for me and they have been fine - and for less than $400, the most cost effective upgrade I could make on a bike that was around $1600 new 18 months ago.

For a more expensive bike you might consider custom built ... I guess .... but I figure if a guy sits down and makes N sets of wheels every day of his working life and they are properly QA-ed then they should be pretty good.

And on the other side of the coin.....I purchased a set of Fulcrum Racing 3 wheels after doing a fair amount of research including watching the Fulcrum quality video etc. They arrived untrue and with large bits of swarf inside the rim. As I was desperate I advised the company I purchased them from and said I would rectify the faults myself. When the freehub failed on the first ride, I returned them. They had the signature of the guy who built them on them as well, pity he must of built these wheels on a Friday afternoon when he need to get to the pub in a hurry.

After swapping this wheelset for a set of Shimano RS80's (and some more cash) I figured I would be fine, unfortunately the RS80's also had a faulty freehub, I never even rode them. At this point I decided on custom made wheels, did some research, purchased DA7900 hubs and had a local builder (who I could talk to) build the wheels.....problem solved.

At the end of the day wheel building requires passion and you either need to find a builder with this passion or a robot in factory that only does what the computer program allows. Mass produced "hand built" wheels are subject to the typically lowly paid factory worker having a bad day, poor training, pressure to get a product finished etc and therefore at are too hit and miss for me, hence my recommendation in my post above.

Custom advice can be confusing. I had one local wheelbuilder ask me about what spokes I was going to use and scoff when I told him 36 CX-Rays.I proceeded to enlighten him that the decision was made, his advice on the spokes hadnt been asked, and unless he could come up with a good reason for his condescending attitude he'd just lost the job of building them.He tried to tell me that the Rohloff's 2.7mm hole was too big for the spoke and that they would definitely brake a 2mm spoke elbow.

Imagine my surprise when looking at the Rohloff site the spokes they state:

"Lacing a SPEEDHUB with extra thick 2.3mm spokes is not permitted. Doing so may well result in hub shell warranty loss."

Further reading ment I found Rohloffs spoke page which shows they sell Sapim spokes (who make CX-Ray) and the spokes Rohloff sell for their hub are in factthe same dimension as Sapims CX-Ray and no mention of needing larger elbow dimensions (2mm is fine).

The wheelbuilder in question supposedly builds a lot of wheels so I dont know what to make of him - Bad day perhaps? I'm taking my build elsewhere

I sent my last lot of hubs to the states in California where wheelbuilder.com resides. I would have done the same with this build but was too paranoid to trust my pricy Rohloff to the postal service once again.

Dave R32 wrote:And on the other side of the coin.....I purchased a set of Fulcrum Racing 3 wheels after doing a fair amount of research including watching the Fulcrum quality video etc. They arrived untrue and with large bits of swarf inside the rim. As I was desperate I advised the company I purchased them from and said I would rectify the faults myself. When the freehub failed on the first ride, I returned them. They had the signature of the guy who built them on them as well, pity he must of built these wheels on a Friday afternoon when he need to get to the pub in a hurry.

After swapping this wheelset for a set of Shimano RS80's (and some more cash) I figured I would be fine, unfortunately the RS80's also had a faulty freehub, I never even rode them. At this point I decided on custom made wheels, did some research, purchased DA7900 hubs and had a local builder (who I could talk to) build the wheels.....problem solved.

So your Fulcrum's arrived out of true, possibly damaged in transit and somehow you had two faulty freehubs - I'm not sure whats that got to do with the person who laced up the wheels.

Clearly you were very unlucky, your experience however is not typical.

Were your Fulcrum's and RS80's bought from your LBS?

Maybe your experince is more about lack of after sales service than it is about wheel quality?

You are wrong about wheel factory workers, the people who do the final build are true craftsmen. The speed and accuracy of their work is amazing.

The reality is that the obsession with low weight means that factory wheelsets are usually 16 or 20 spokes front, 20-24 spokes rear, which results in a under built wheelset for many riders. Custom wheelsets are much less likely to be under built.

biker jk wrote:The reality is that the obsession with low weight means that factory wheelsets are usually 16 or 20 spokes front, 20-24 spokes rear, which results in a under built wheelset for many riders. Custom wheelsets are much less likely to be under built.

I'd agree with that, and add it's also about aesthetics -> lower spoke counts look cooler. Larger spoke counts are more tolerant of uneven spoke tension, therefore less likely to break spokes between services. I'm not an expert but I've seen 2 mates break a spoke on a 20 spoke wheel, and try and ride it a few km back home, but they both broke another spoke within a km. I've seen a 32 spoke wheel break a spoke, and be ridden about 12km home successfully.

biker jk wrote:The reality is that the obsession with low weight means that factory wheelsets are usually 16 or 20 spokes front, 20-24 spokes rear, which results in a under built wheelset for many riders. Custom wheelsets are much less likely to be under built.

If that were true, the opposite could be argued for the custom builder who maybe over-building the wheelset resulting in something heavier and with more spokes (less aero) than required?

If I were building one-off wheels, thats absolutely what I'd be doing. I wouldn't want any warranty so everything would be over-built.

With an untested bespoke build the builder adds extra spokes as an insurance policy whereas the factory wheel has been tested and the manufacturer knows how many spokes are required for the recommended rider weight.

We might have to agree to disagree

I can supply you a 20/24 wheelset that I'll warranty up to a 120kg rider, every bit as strong and a quarter of the price of most of the 32/36 custom built wheels I've seen for made for "heavy" riders.

as Winstonw said, I've got 32 hole Deep V's. I broke my first ever spoke on the Ipswich 100km ride last year about 40km from the finish (pothole) and didn't realise it was broken til the finish. Guy I was riding with hit it too and lost his tailight and nearly came off himself, so it was a decent whack! I got that spoke replaced and the shop (which I will not defame) did a !! BAN ME NOW FOR SWEARING !! job of retensioning the spokes and I broke another spoke soon after while on a 90km Redcliffe ride. I loosened off the brakes and made it back from Sandgate to home which is about 30-40km.

biker jk wrote:The reality is that the obsession with low weight means that factory wheelsets are usually 16 or 20 spokes front, 20-24 spokes rear, which results in a under built wheelset for many riders. Custom wheelsets are much less likely to be under built.

If you look into the lighter wheelsets it would appear the best way to get the weight down is less material in the rim and compensate for the weaker rim with a higher spoke count.

In regards to breaking spokes on the lower spoke count wheels I have to ask how often is this really happening? Without a foreign object causing the damage cases of broken spokes seam to be extremely rare amoungst the people I know and ride with. I'm yet to see a broken front spoke that wasn't caused by something jamming between the spoke and fork and of the group I ride with regularly the only person with a rear spoke issue was on a custom built 32 spoke wheel. The rest, who mostly ride on 20 front, 24 rear (or less) factory wheels have not had an issue.

So unless you're carrying excess weight or are using your bike for doing something crazy like using your road bike for a downhill MTB course I can't see why the factory wheels should have any durability issues.

petal665 wrote:You should ride with people who use powertaps. Then you will see spokes breaking on 24 holed rear wheels in the middle of no where quite regularly. (Well twice anyway in the last couple of months)

Its all in the build, regularly breaking spokes means uneven, too little or too much spoke tension.

Throwing more spokes at it just makes it easier for a numpty to build, if you don't get the tensions right you'll still break spokes, even on a 36 spoke wheel however more spokes do give you a greater margin for error.

Once you've broken 2 or 3 spokes, its very difficult to get the tension right. At this point you need to de-tension and re-tension the wheel from scratch otherwise you'll contine to break spokes...

I would only use hand built wheels as i can select what hub, rim, spokes, nipples i want to use and then as i know the best wheel builder in Australia and have been taught by him i can gaurante the work and won't have any spokes comming loose or breaking from normal use.

If DA9000 is on the table, why not get a custom build using the DA rim? It's not like it's impossible to get such things done. I think my aim at the moment is to get factory rims done up with custom hubs and spokes. Some factory wheels will be overbuilt if you're light, and hubs can vary in weight quite a lot. Stock hub on the alu/carbon rims seems to be heavy. But if you are scared of all carbon rims, it makes for an interesting proposal

Xplora wrote:If DA9000 is on the table, why not get a custom build using the DA rim? It's not like it's impossible to get such things done. I think my aim at the moment is to get factory rims done up with custom hubs and spokes. Some factory wheels will be overbuilt if you're light, and hubs can vary in weight quite a lot. Stock hub on the alu/carbon rims seems to be heavy. But if you are scared of all carbon rims, it makes for an interesting proposal

Hard to do. DA rims are drilled 16f, 20r (and the C24 rims cost $250-$300 each) and not many hubs come in those drillings (if any).

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